Oakland Police Department Settlement: City May Pay $1 Million To Protesters

The City of Oakland has agreed to pay approximately $1 million to end a lawsuit filed on behalf of 150 demonstrators alleging police misconduct in their 2010 mass arrest.

The preliminary settlement approved by a federal judge ends the class-action lawsuit filed by the National Lawyers Guild on behalf of 150 people arrested but not charged with a crime during a protest in November 2010. The protest followed the sentencing of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle for the shooting death of Oscar Grant, which the demonstrators complained was unacceptably light.

During the demonstration, protesters said, police funneled them onto a side street, where officers surrounded them and announced they were under arrest.

"We were never given a warning or a chance to leave," Dan Spalding, a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild who was present at the march, said in a statement Monday. "We were handcuffed and left sitting on the street and then in buses for a total of about eight hours without access to a bathroom. People urinated in their pants as we sat in the hot, crowded bus."

After the demonstrators were taken off the bus, they were crowded overnight into Alameda County Sheriff's Department temporary holding cells, with neither beds nor blankets. Two of the 152 people were charged. The others were released without charges the following day.

Rachel Lederman, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, told The Huffington Post that the Oakland police actions broke the department's own policy and a California law requiring that suspects arrested for minor offenses be released with a ticket rather than jailed. The police department's crowd control policy, implemented in 2004 following a legal settlement involving the use of concussion grenades and tear gas during a raucous anti-Iraq War protest at the Port of Oakland, says officers must warn people before conducting a mass arrest and allow an opportunity to disperse. Lederman said the police didn't do that before the 2010 arrests.

"This was a perfectly legal demonstration through city streets and there was a predetermined plan by the police that they would not be allowed to march," Lederman said. "As soon as things got difficult for OPD, they threw the rulebook out the window."

The settlement, which was given the okay by federal judge Thelton Henderson earlier this month, was announced by the Lawyer's Guild on Monday and still requires another round approval. It gives the court oversight of the police crowd control policy for four to seven years. That means the police department would have to consult with outside groups, including the Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union, to alter the policy on handling large crowds. The court oversaw the policy for a few years after its implementation, but the oversight had since expired.

"There's been a lack of will by the leadership of OPD to reform," Lederman said. "There's a lack of accountability throughout the department where officers feel they can violate peoples' rights with impunity."

Oakland police referred a HuffPost request for comment to the Oakland City Attorney's office, which did not immediately respond.

The Lawyers Guild continues pressing another lawsuit against Oakland police involving the handling of a large crowd.

The group alleges police used excessive force during violent clashes with Occupy Oakland protesters in late 2011 that left Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen critically injured.

Correction: The article originally misstated Mr. Bratton's title and court's process in the ultimate approval of the lawsuit.

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Police Brutality Incidents

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An officer in Baltimore City was charged with animal cruelty after allegedly slitting the throat of Nala (pictured with owner), a pet who had escaped from her home.
Nala had nipped at a woman's hand earlier in the day, but even that woman was horrified by officers' treatment of the dog. She noted that Nala was not aggressive, but had bitten her only "out of fear."
Click here to read the whole story.

In April 2012, an officer in Sulphur, Louisiana approached two men on trespassing charges and, while apprehending them, tied one of the men's dog to a nearby fence.
A third party witness at the scene said that the dog was rubbing up against the officer, who was petting him, but then "all of a sudden, he just jumped down and shot the dog in the head."
The officer later claimed the dog had bitten him, but both the witness and the dog's owner say that's not true.
Click here to read the whole story.

FILE - This July 5, 2011 file still frame from security camera video, released May 7, 2012, by the Orange County District Attorney, shows an altercation between Fullerton police officers and Kelly Thomas at the Fullerton, Calif., bus depot. Thomas died days later. Two officers, Manuel Ramos, and Jay Ciccinelli, are on trial charges related to his death. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2013. (AP Photo/Orange County District Attorney, File)

Oscar Grant was shot by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer early on New Year's Day 2009 in Oakland, Calif. Cellphone footage shows BART cops struggling with Grant and forcing him to lay facedown on the platform after reports of a fight on the train. Officer Johannes Mehserle was seen shooting Grant in the back once, killing him. He was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter, but acquitted of second degree murder.

In one of the most notorious cases of police brutality, a bystander recorded four Los Angeles Police Department officers beating Rodney King with their batons in 1991 after they pulled him over for driving erratically. When the videotape emerged days later of the attack, the four cops were charged with assault. A jury acquitted them, sparking riots in April 1992 that killed 55 people and led to 12,000 arrests over seven days.

Off-duty Chicago police officer Anthony Abbate was sentenced to two years probation and anger management classes after being captured on video beating a female bartender in 2007.

Chicago police officer William Cozzi was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison after he was caught on camera in 2005 handcuffing a man to a wheelchair and beating him in a hospital. Cozzi claimed the victim -- a man who was seeking treatment for stab wounds -- had attacked him.

A New York City police officer was acquitted of assault and harassment after being videotaped knocking over cyclist Christopher Long during a "Critical Mass" bike ride through Times Square in 2008. Patrick Pogan resigned from the police force and was found guilty of filing false documents after video emerged that contradicted his claim that Long swerved into him.

Ahmed Amadou Diallo, 22, seen here in an undated photo, was gunned down at his home in the Bronx borough of New York early Thursday morning, Feb. 4, 1999. Four white police officers from the elite Street Crime Unit fired 41 shots at Diallo, a black West African immigrant who had no police record and was unarmed. Diallo was hit 19 times and died instantly. The officers' lawyer says Diallo gestured with his hands, leading the police to think he was reaching for a gun.

Abner Loiuma became a symbol of unchecked police force after the Haitian immigrant was sodomized with a broomstick by cops in a New York City police station in 1997. The officer responsible for the attack, Justin Volpe, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

London newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson died after police officer Simon Harwood hit him with a baton and knocked him to the ground as he walked away from police during a G-20 protest in 2009. Harwood will stand trial in October for manslaughter, according to The Guardian.

Michael Mineo accused an NYPD cop of sodomizing him with a baton after getting busted for smoking marijuana at a Brooklyn subway station in October 2008. A jury cleared the officer accused in the attack as well as two others charged with covering up the alleged assault.

In this May 24, 2010 file photo, former Chicago Police commander Jon Burge departs the federal building in Chicago. Burge, whose name has become synonymous with police brutality and abuse of power in Chicago, was convicted in 2010 of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying in a civil suit when he said he'd never witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects.

The trial is underway for four New Orleans police officers accused of killing two people and wounding four others in the shooting on the Danziger Bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The suspects, pictured left to right, are Robert Faulcon Jr., Robert Gisevius Jr., Kenneth Bowen, and Anthony Villavaso II.

Security cameras in a Manhattan apartment building recorded NYPD officer David London hitting Iraq war veteran Walter Harvin almost 20 times with a baton even after he had handcuffed him. The incident began when Harvin entered the building without a key and refused to identify himself to London. Footage shows Harvin shoved London, but the cop lied to investigators by claiming that he'd been punched before retaliating with his baton. A jury acquitted London of assault and making false statements in 2010.

Eleanor Bumpurs, a 66-year-old African American woman, was killed by NYPD officers who were trying to evict her from her Bronx public housing apartment in 1984 for falling behind on her rent. City housing authority workers called in the cops, because they claimed that Bumpurs -- shown in an undated photo -- was mentally ill and that she menaced them with a knife while refusing to vacate her home. The officer who shot Bumpers twice with a shotgun was acquitted in 1987.

The 2006 shooting of 23-year-old Sean Bell raised questions in New York City about the NYPD's use of excessive force. On what would have been his wedding day, Bell was shot and killed by police in a hail of 50 bullets outside a strip club in Queens. Officers said they thought the victim and his friends, who were celebrating Bell's bachelor party, were planning on retrieving a gun from their vehicle when they opened fire. After months of protests around the city, Officers Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper were acquitted in 2008.